Beacons

Beacons: Where planning meets purpose. Our app champions privacy, inclusivity, and eco-consciousness, transforming each event into a stride towards a more sustainable, interconnected community.

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Inspiration 📍

In an era where digital platforms are omnipresent, the challenge of fostering genuine connections while promoting ethical technology use has never been more pressing. The inspiration for "Beacons" came from our own experiences of struggling to coordinate plans and communicate effectively with groups. We recognized a void in digital solutions that not only streamline planning but do so with a focus on community, inclusivity, and sustainability. Our aim was to create an all-in-one solution that not only simplifies event coordination but also embodies the principles of socially responsible platforms, nurturing connections that extend beyond the digital realm. The inspiration for the name Beacons comes from the fact that a beacon is a light that brings people together and creates an opportunity for all to become a better version of themselves by working together. With this in mind, we built our app with the intention of it being a beacon for Beacons and allowing all these individual events to shine in one place.

What it does 👭👬

Beacons is a pioneering app crafted to redefine the planning landscape, ensuring ease of communication and organization for events of all scales while adhering to ethical digital practices. It emerges as a beacon of responsible technology, providing:

  • Login Page: Secure entry to a personalized planning hub, emphasizing data protection and privacy.
  • Feed: An updated view of invites with an intuitive response mechanism, promoting digital wellness by reducing clutter and enhancing focus.
  • Map: A sustainable approach to event planning, featuring eco-friendly suggestions and local event highlights to minimize environmental impact.
  • Create Event: A feature that encourages community engagement and inclusivity, allowing for the easy organization of gatherings that cater to diverse interests and needs.
  • Profile Area: A space for users to express their preferences and manage settings, ensuring a tailored and responsible user experience.
  • Create Group/Add Friend: Facilitates building community ties, enabling users to forge and nurture connections based on shared interests and activities that brings people together in our digital age

How we built it ⌨️

In constructing Beacons, we used a cohesive tech stack that reflects our commitment to responsible innovation. This included:

  • Frontend: Utilizing React Native for a universally accessible, cross-platform user interface compatible with devices of all builds/sizes.
  • Backend: Node.js with Express, ensuring efficient processes and ethical data handling, easily integrateable with our frontend.
  • Database: MongoDB, chosen for its flexibility and scalability, aligns with our sustainable development goals and can easily be controlled through our Node.js backend.
  • APIs: Implementing Apple Maps for its commitment to privacy and environmental sustainability in location-based services with easily implementable functions.

Challenges we ran into ⏰

Throughout our experience building Beacons, we faced and overcame a variety of obstacles. To start with, in order to fulfill the theme of building a socially responsible platform, we had to factor in ethical considerations in every aspect of Beacons. From seamless map functionalities with an eco-friendly focus along with complex encryption and data security techniques at all levels, we went the extra mile to ensure our app aligned with our standards of digital wellbeing. An additional challenge we faced was within our user authentication protocol, which we initially planned to do with Auth0. However, Auth0 and Expo, the platform we used to develop our React Native app, were incompatible with a variety of documented issues. Our alternative plan, which involved Firebase, also faced similar challenges, leading us to develop our own authentication and authorization system from scratch. We also made many small mistakes in terms of file names and API routes, which meant that we had to spend time documenting many details within the backend and frontend, taking more time than it should have. All in all, these obstacles were a learning opportunity that allowed us all to become more professional and experienced programmers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of 🎉

Developing Beacons has been an enriching journey, deeply rooted in our shared commitment to use technology for societal good. Our team, a diverse group united by this common goal, has overcome numerous challenges through close collaboration and innovative problem-solving. The impact Beacons has the potential to make is what we are most proud of. From testing the app, its potential usage highlights its role in enhancing real-world connections and community engagement, affirming our vision of technology as a tool for positive change. With what we have developed so far, Beacons definitely serves a purpose within our communities to not only bring people together who would never have met otherwise but also add a new dynamic to relationships that already exist.

What we learned 🗞️

This hackathon fostered in us a variety of skills that we will be able to apply within future hackathons as well as our careers within the technological sector. Not only did we deepen our understanding of the soft skills required to work within a team, but we also were able to practice our programming skills and learn more about the technologies that we will eventually be using within internships/jobs. We distributed our work not according to what we were most comfortable with, but instead based on what we had the least experience with, meaning that all members of our team were assigned a task that they were not as familiar with. We also learned more about the balance between technology and social responsibility, and what goes into integrating sustainable practices within software development, a pursuit that we hope to match within our future ventures.

What's next for Beacons 🔍

Our vision for Beacons includes evolving it into an even more impactful platform. We plan to integrate features for personalized event recommendations that prioritize sustainability and inclusivity, enhance location-based services to support local economies, and introduce new ways for users to engage with and contribute to their communities responsibly. We plan to continue to build out this application within the near future and are open to any feedback/advice that can be provided!

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